►Back to the eEdition eXtras index
![]()
Common Core State Standard
SL.CCS.1/2/3/4 Grades 6-12: An essay of a current news event is provided for discussion to encourage participation, but also inspire the use of evidence to support logical claims using the main ideas of the article. Students must analyze background information provided about a current event within the news, draw out the main ideas and key details, and review different opinions on the issue. Then, students should present their own claims using facts and analysis for support. FOR THE WEEK OF OCT. 17, 2005 Women in power: From Germany to the U.S. the political landscape is changing![]() ![]() Assign your students to follow newspaper reports about Condoleezza Rice in her role as Secretary of State and of Republican presidential campaign news. Also have them track Hillary Clinton in her role as a U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential campaign news.
![]() Ask your students to find news stories about women in power positions whether in politics, business or the entertainment fields. Have them make a list of the most powerful women they are aware of. Are most of the women American? Why is that?
![]() Local elections will be held across the country in November. Ask your students to check out their newspapers for candidate ads, issue ads, campaign stories, letters to the editor and editorial page endorsements of candidates. Have them invite a local editor to the classroom to discuss the process the newspaper follows in selecting candidates to endorse for office.
News came last week that Angela Merkel will replace Gerhard Schroeder as chancellor of Germany, becoming the first woman and first East German to hold the office. President George W. Bush has nominated Harriet Miers to succeed the nation's first female Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor. And on television a new attention-getting series, "Commander-in-Chief," starring Geena Davis as the first female President is drawing big audiences. Are forces at work that in the 2008 election could put a woman in the White House -- not as First Lady but as President? And could the first female President also be the first black President? A former adviser to President Bill Clinton thinks so -- and in a book released this month he insists that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the only Republican candidate who could defeat a Hillary Clinton candidacy. Now, for the first time, a majority of voters say they would back a woman running for President. The first woman to serve in the U.S. Congress was Montana's Jeannette Rankin, elected to the House of Representatives in 1916, four years before American women had the right to vote. She promptly introduced the first bill that would have given women U.S. citizenship independent of their husbands. A fierce pacifist, Rankin was one of 49 members of Congress who voted against the U.S. entry into World War I. That stand cost her a Republican Senate nomination and she lost a campaign as an independent. In 1940, she ran as an antiwar candidate, won another House term and was the only member of Congress to vote against going to war after Pearl Harbor. She didn't try for re-election. But she didn't quit on her convictions either. In 1968, at the age of 87, she led 5,000 women in an antiwar march to Capitol Hill to protest the Vietnam War. The first woman U.S. Senator was Rebecca Felton of Georgia who served for 24 hours, from noon Nov. 21 to noon Nov. 22, 1922. She was appointed as a Democrat by the governor after the death of the incumbent, Thomas Watson. Because a successor already had been elected to replace Watson, Felton's service was a one-day symbol, but she made a speech in that one day that was described as "well received". In addition to serving the shortest Senate term, at 87 she was the oldest Senator sworn in for the first time. The first woman elected to the Senate was Hattie Caraway, an Arkansas Democrat who came to be known as "Silent Hattie" because she served from 1932 to 1945 but never made a speech from the Senate floor. The first woman to serve as a state governor was Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming, elected in 1924 to succeed her late husband. She also was the first woman director of the U.S. Mint, appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. She served until 1953. Ahead of its time more than once, Wyoming passed a women's suffrage law in 1869, some 51 years before it was adopted nationwide. Front Page Talking Points is written by
Alan Stamm for NIEonline.com, Copyright 2024
Front Page Talking Points Archive►Turning point: Supreme Court says presidents have 'absolute immunity' for official acts ►First Biden-Trump debate of 2024 airs Thursday from Georgia ►Health experts monitor the jump of bird flu to cows and a few farm hands, but see no wide risk ►Negro Leagues stars from a bygone era gain new standing in Major League Baseball records ►Justice Samuel Alito adds two flags to Supreme Court ethics storms ►Use of new weight-loss drugs soars among teens ►Needy families await action on bill to restore federal internet service rebates ►U.S. government may challenge concert business dominance of Live Nation and Ticketmaster |